Heart of Flesh

I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

Was it just yesterday I realized how suppressed I had become? Just yesterday I realized... I'd taught myself not to feel?

I imagined easing myself back into a full spectrum of emotion. Maybe, if I went slowly, I could bypass the emotions I had set out to eradicate anyway.

I am not sure at what point Jon mentioned these words from Ezekiel. But I sat there and felt as though he spoke them over me. And God, who had situated Himself in between my shoulder blades, whispered "Let Me."

Let you ... what?

Wake you up.

Oh. But I am awake. It's fine. I've just learned how to cope.

I never intended for you just to cope, my love. Coping was not part of My plan.

I'd really rather not feel those old things again, though. Really. I feel pretty at peace.

Peace? You feel pretty numb, actually. What I have to offer you is not the absence of something. I'm quite a bit stronger than those old things you're afraid of. But if you don't let Me wake you up... you're going to miss out. You're going to forget who you are...

He was asking permission to shake me.

To splash my face with cold water. Raise me from a coma of self preservation.

Alright... go ahead. Take this heart...

Have you ever felt the pinch of severed nerves growing back together? Sharp, healing pain.

God had been hovering. Waiting for me. We had not gotten to the point of disconnect where He was going to act without permission. It was still my choice. He waited patiently, suspended over me, His breath like wind on my face. In the very moment I conceded... He reached for my sleeping heart.

My heart wasn't made of stone. Not yet. But it was callused and rough. Untrusting. Because people can disappoint me. People break my heart. I love them, but there's a wall - for my protection and for theirs. If that wall crumbles, I'm subject to great hurt. Vulnerable.

I might lose you. Or you might leave.

There, then, was a twinge in my heart. Maybe even, like a limb that's gone numb and slowly begins to wake up as you move it. The pain of feeling.

My heart had just fallen asleep.

And exactly as I'd feared, like a tidal wave or a swollen current, there came the tears. Tears for orphans in the DR. For my friends without beds. For the babies I didn't hold in Yaso. I cried for my own loneliness and my own sense of disorientation.

Compassion woke up inside of me.

After I'd let go of all those tears, and then some, I prayed expectantly. Confidently, once again.

Take this heart...

It's been Mine for a while now. Don't worry.

Well, then. If You're going to ask me feel to the sadness and fear and loneliness I was trying to avoid... would You release me to feel the joy and excitement and hope I buried along the way too?

He laughs at me when I talk to Him like this.

Let's go...

I have a lot of digging to do. Some sifting and some sorting.

He's stirring my soul.

He's shaken me awake.

Deep He is, calling to the deepest parts of me.

Like He calls to the depths of tombs. A beckoning more powerful than fear of vulnerability or the grip of death.

Sometimes... God works ridiculously fast.

Wake up, o sleeper...